SOCIAL SIDE OF COUNTRY LIFE 299 



If you think we are at an end of evolution you are 

 mistaken. The parcels post has got into every po- 

 litical platform and is acknowledged by all parties 

 as a social necessity. Telephones are probably as 

 cheaply afforded as possible already, but there is no 

 reason why they shall not transmit to a group of 

 homes lectures and debates. The telephone tea 

 party I have already mentioned, but it is in all sober- 

 ness a part of coming country life, when our homes 

 will be something more than individual retreats, 

 when they can be practically, if temporarily, lecture 

 halls. The school will no doubt yet be, in this way, 

 so associated with our homes that the old and the 

 young will be at school together. 



The agricultural college is steadily becoming asso- 

 ciated with farms and is likely to go much farther in 

 the same direction. It really is itself a great farm, 

 thoroughly practical and experimental. The pro- 

 fessors of gardening and agronomy become naturally 

 associated with us in our outdoor work, while indoors 

 we have a new sort of trained leaders in domestic 

 economy and domestic science. As' a matter of fact, 

 these men and women are taking their places as so- 

 cial leaders, not as mere recluses or scholars, but 

 knowing the practical things that make for prosper- 

 ity, they teach it to the people. College is hardly a 

 descriptive name for these institutions, for that word 

 has become identified too closely with schools where 

 scholarship is the end and not the means. 



Mr. Roosevelt in one of his most pungent ad- 



